For a while American Airlines management has been dropping hints that a new slogan should be imminent for the airline.
Shortly after American’s merger with US Airways, the company adopted the slogans “Going For Great” and “Great Is What We’re Going For.” At the time it was believable, as American Airlines was taking delivery of a lot of new planes with nice interiors, employees were overall pretty optimistic about the future of the airline, etc.
Suffice to say that things have changed since then in just about every way, for just about all parties (shareholders, employees, and customers). But the point of this isn’t to beat a dead horse, but rather to discuss what American may soon be choosing as their next slogan.
American Airlines’ New Slogan?
I think we’ve all been hoping that American Airlines will eventually come to their senses and give employees any sort of direction about where the company is headed. While a slogan or mission statement as such doesn’t do that, it certainly gives you a good understanding of what management is thinking.
American Airlines filed four four trademarks on slogans in September 2019, and it sure seems pretty likely to me that one of these might be American’s new slogan.
Here are the four slogans that American Airlines has requested trademarks for, and then we’ll talk about them in more detail:
- “To Care For People On Life’s Journey”
- “We Fly So You Can Soar”
- “Our Favorite Destination Is Yours”
- “Time Well Spent”
“To Care For People On Life’s Journey”
My first thought when I heard this is that it sounds like the slogan for a nursing home, or something. It almost reminds me of Cathay Pacific’s new “Move Beyond” slogan, which I’m not a huge fan of.
Despite that, I think this is my favorite of the four choices. Why? Because it’s the only one that in any way engages American’s employees in the mission statement/slogan.
The airline is caring for customers, rather than the other slogans, which could apply to any airline.
I think this slogan would sound less terminal (and not in an airport way) if they changed “journey” to “journeys.” I actually kind of like “To Care For People On Life’s Journeys.”
“We Fly So You Can Soar”
We’re humans, not birds. And the first thing that comes to mind is “we fly so you can be sore,” given American’s new aircraft interiors. It also sets the bar low, and does nothing to differentiate American from any other airline.
Every airline flies, so why are American customers more likely to “soar?”
“Our Favorite Destination Is Yours”
This is clearly intended to emphasize that American is the largest airline in the world. Great, they fly a lot of places, but that doesn’t really in any way engage American’s employees or customers.
While I’m probably being a bit picky here, I also consider American to certainly be less global than United in terms of their route network, and globally they can’t compete with the likes of Turkish.
If my favorite destinations are Tahiti, Singapore, and Cape Town, is American my favorite airline, or United? Heck, if my favorite destination is anywhere in Africa with the exception of Casablanca a few days per week seasonally, does American really have me covered? 😉
“Time Well Spent”
This is probably the slogan I like least, because huh? It’s probably intentionally very open ended, but is this supposed to suggest that time spent on American Airlines is time well spent, or that American will get you where you need to go so you can spend your time well, or…?
This one does nothing for me.
Bottom Line
It’s expected that American will soon refresh their branding, though I wouldn’t get too excited about any major changes at the company otherwise.
I was hoping — though certainly not expecting — that American would eventually turn a corner and try to engage their people with new purpose. Unfortunately these four slogans suggest to me that’s pretty unlikely.
Only one of these slogans in any way engages American’s employees and talks about what they’ll do for customers, while the other three just kind of tell me that American flies a lot of places. It’s also possible that they end up going with a completely different slogan…
Lastly, while this obviously relied heavily on post-9/11 patriotism, can we just appreciate for a moment how brilliant American’s ad campaign was after 9/11? It still gives me goosebumps…
What do you make of these four slogans, and do you like any of them?
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